re: last story. Instant-Death mechanics are simply bad design. OP had no reason to believe touching the crown would kill them, ESPECIALLY not since someone else had already touched it. This wasn't the "consequences of his actions." This was a DM who wanted an excuse to kill a PC and only give them a token chance to avoid it. That is a very big red flag on that DM, and I'd keep an eye out for more, because I suspect they will keep coming.
"Instant-Dearh mechanics are simply bad design." Under most circumstances, yes. At the same time, it depends on the party, the run, the story, and purpose of the game. We had an old shareware game called Mordor (creative, I know), where you would create a character and delve layer by layer into the abyss. There were tons of encounters, and a few instant death traps. Each death though? It left behind that character's corpse. Every single one. That meant that my sister's "Sriess" character that got turned to stone? We could loot it and pay respects once we reached level 19. The corpses that littered levels 1-5? All our failed attempts. My "Death Ronin" on level 8? Marked the dart trap. Overall it worked like corpses irl on Mount Everest, markers for where to avoid or what turn to take. And yes, each character creation was as in depth as making a D&D sheet, just slightly more automated: race, class, height, points, abilities, skills, etc. It all depends, like most things in tabletop rpgs. It all just depends.
@@Undomaranel Issue is this is OP's first DM experience. He is pretty much a noob. DM is not only punishing him specifically while not using the same rule against the Paladin who originally dropped the crown, But also making sure he dies. He didnt insta kill the Rogue. He tried to make him runaway. When Rogue was caught by his teammates, he purposefully killed the rogue through forced suicide without giving any chance to other players, who could've saved the rogue. DM seems simply unreasonable at that point.
This wasn't insta-death, nor do I think you know what that mechanic actually is. Insta-death is where a player gets no option, save, or ability checks to avoid a deadly encounter, like entering a hallway and the DM says the ceiling collapses, killing the character. Even in original D&D, which had many save or die mechanics, it was stated that insta-death mechanics were not fair to do, nor was the game intended to use them (at least post-Gygax). However, the DM seemed dead set on killing this character, though it definitely isn't an insta-death mechanic so much as DM *BS* mechanic typical of crap DMs.
I did this once. I had a character leave the party because I felt the plot was something my character wasn't interested in and they had other goals. I told the party upfront I was leaving. There was some in character and out of character conversation. The split was mutual and my character set themselves up as mayor of a town we liberated. So the party occasionally stops by during the main quest arc.
On the last story: There are only so many things things you should have in your game that will lead to unavoidable death with a single failure of a save, but one in the first session?! Players even sounded sorta clever, trying to knock the crown off with an attack, but the DM's response sounded more like bullshitting on the fly rather than legitimate pre-planned effects.
I once had a character leave a campaing, but not it such a way and it went horribly. It was a character refusing to be brought back to life. She was a barbarian, very proud and sure of her strength.We were playing with a few homebrew D&D 3.5 rules, we had a certain number of points we could put into advantages and flaws and I chose to make her the descendant of white dragon. She started lvl 1with 22 strength (I know it's a lot) but 6 intelligence and 6 wisdom, immune to cold damage but took twice as much in fire damage. She was basicly a grown womanwith a kid's mind. When we reach lvl 5, we had to investigate an horde of monsters appearing at the country's frontier. The DM only described "You see 3 demons on a hill, far from the rest of the horde. One is big and read, one is a grey toad and the last one is a small winged gremlin." The party leader told my character to handle the big red demon (we all though it was a red slaad) while the other targetted the grey toad to gain some time while reinforcement were on the way. Well, I won initiative and attackthe creature. Critical it. "Unforunately, the balor is wearing an enchanted armor negating your critical hit, it was given to him by the death slaad next to him." Then the balor struck at me, critical hit, my character's head went flying. So my character was killed in 1 blow, proving to herself she was weak and useless and couldn't protect her friends, something she took pride in. Turn out the whole thing was involve the DM's friends main characters, a bunch of lvl 35 demi-gods that whiped the floor with the demon hordeand the bosses and resurected every one. My character refused and I was blasted as a stupid kid throwing a tamper tantrum. Mycharacter was a follower of Tyr (Yeah, the Northen god, homebrew remember?) and felt like she was so weak she didn't deserve a second chance. Tyr disagreed with her, saw her valor, saw how she struck at an opponent she had no chance to even beat and chose to accept her in his realm. When I explained my situation to the DM, we reluctantly agreed with me. His friend though litteraly told me "I'm a demi god, the apostle of Freya. If I say I bring you back yo life, I bring you back to life so stop whining." The DM took my side, told him to go fight Tyr if he wanted my soul back but, let's be honest, after that whole fiasco, I didn't feel like being a part of that group any longer.
Depending on the DM's homebrew, i think the "friend" would have to deal with not only Tyr but also Hel, since hes trying to forcefully ressurect someone.
@@peterwhite6415 Maybe... I'm not so sure to be honest. Remember, that player was one of the DM's friends and he screwed over a whole group of player to make them look cool. Making him fight 2 gods would just make him look stupid, so I really doubt he would have done something like that.
That DM in the second story was absolutely being a jerk - I saw a *ton* of that behavior when i was playing world of darkness games on IRC back in the day, and it was usually tied to this weird sense of elitism on the part of the DM (or storyteller, in the case of world of darkness). Like, it almost felt like they thought new players were too 'soft' and really wanted to impress upon them the grit and gravity of "super serious roleplay" in basically the most maladaptive and stupid way possible. Felt more like bullying than a good way to ease a new person into a hobby you ostensibly love and want to share with others, you know?
Not being a jerk, but rather NOT DOING HIS DAMN JOB! They set up the rules at session zero and is NOT ENFORCING THEM! Not to mention that the guy admitted to making contrarian characters ON PURPOSE! He should have been booted on the spot when he admitted that he wouldn't play ball
On last story: that DM was absolutely being a prick. If he's running some Darkest Dungeon / Tomb of Horrors style stuff, he should 100% have been up front with that. As well, even RAW the crown couldn't do that. And to then add in some kind of force field to actively prevent the Paladin from saving you? Dick moves all the way down. I'd also be curious, which PLAYER mentioned the Pally knocked the crown with their tail? Was it the Pally player or the GM? Because if it was the GM that just sounds like trying to stir up shit. It can be fun to mess with your players, have weird, absurd stuff happen that they just don't have full perspective on. It can be funny, it can be scary, TONS of story potential. But you don't frakkin' KILL the PCs with it! That's just shitty writing. Like one of the lesser Friday the 13th movies.
Honestly, the real problem with that death is that the player in question only got ONE Roll to not die a delayed Death, everything after that was just giving them false hope... What makes it worse is that they didn't have any warning that this could happen beyond the Paladin just going "Don't touch that", which could just as well be "I know you rogues have Sticky Fingers" Type of moment... The Scenario would have Been Less of a dick move if it had just been "Your Character walks into a room, Make a... What's your Weakest Save? Yeah Roll that, Beat 20.... Oh, you Failed? Well your character Drops dead, and can't be Revived by any means as the Floor Sucks your Soul out." (No, there was no perception check to notice the magical trap as it had no Physical Identifiers)... At least in this Scenario the Death is Instant, and you don't get Trolled Into thinking you Might survive for I'm assuming 20 or more Minutes of play time! I Mean, this is still a Massive Dick move, but it would be Less bad than what this Player was put though.
I had to leave a campaign spanning three and a half years about a year ago, and while it wasn’t necessarily by choice, my DM did give me agency in how I left. I won’t go into unnecessary detail, but the TLDR is that another player and I were both close friends of the DM. The other player was overreacting to an event that took place out of campaign, and taking out their anger on us, the other players. I called the other player out on their BS and privately told our DM that I was getting tired of other player’s behavior, as it wasn’t the first time something like that had occurred. DM interpreted that to mean she had to pick between which friend she had to keep and which to boot. I had made another good friend through DM, and she told him (he even had pictures to prove it) that she had gone to the other players and asked them which one she should keep. Apparently, if they were forced to keep one, the group nearly unanimously wanted to keep the other player. I admit that it was extremely painful to know that my DM, who had been a good friend for about 5 years had gone behind my back, and that the players I spent so much time with had all voted against me. DM tried to explain to me their collective rationales, but a lot of it was cherry picking. For example, those three years we had spent playing IRL? Yeah, in game, it was only 2 months. My character had undergone a massive redemption arc, and apparently that arc was “unbelievable” in that time frame (ironic given that everyone in the group watched tons of anime, where quick redemptions happen all the time), and had apparently caused the DM a lot of extra work (as if the Rogue’s secret behind the scenes cult wasn’t a lot of extra work too?). Still, I said my DM did give me agency in my departure, so I might as well address that. Given how much time that had passed, I talked with her about a worthwhile reason to leave, and we ran with that. TLDR, the redemption arc allowed my character’s mother, who my character had believed dead for years, to psychically reach out to her. My character also found out that shortly before the campaign had started, the lover she had abandoned had gotten her pregnant. Given the amount of time that had passed, around the 2 month mark was when morning sickness started, prompting her to visit the doctor and discover the pregnancy. Choosing to keep her child, my character made a bold choice. While it would pain her to leave the group, the frontier time we had made our base in was no place to raise a child, and she wanted to reunite with her mother after all these years apart. My character made her goodbyes, packed up, and left… and about 8 months later was reunited with her mother. Now they’re a family again, my character, her mother, and her infant daughter! It still pains me when I think about the actions of my DM and other players, but I suppose things weren’t as good as I had believed if one disagreement pushed me off the edge. I only wish literally any of the players, or even my DM had talked to me before it apparently got that bad. Did they truly think I was THAT unapproachable?
I tend to retire my characters it seems. I had 2 in particular who went through the same crisis yours did. 1) Dresden Files FATE game. I played an inventor who got roped into running around with the party because of his need to know everything about everything and how it worked. The GM actually put a Denarius in front of the character and suddenly the character had access to magic. I had the classic fight against the demon inside the coin. But eventually I found the character was too easy to get through anything the dm threw at us. So I had a chat and decided the character would retire. But he did it by betraying the party, fully embracing the demon to gain more knowledge and is now a BBEG the party has to continually worry about. My replacement character is the former assistant to the former charcter/now-BBEG. So the GM and I basically traded character sheets during the separation battle between the party and the new BBEG. 2) shadowrun. I was playing a decker/rigger that the GM gave us some money laundering tasks for a high level yakuza boss. My character set it up and pocketed a percentage. The GM wasn't expecting that but thought it was funny that I had increased the money for the yakuza and taken some off the top. So she let it go. I didn't question how much it was at the time figuring it was a small amount. But my take was around 300,000 nuyen. I later found this out and quickly spent the money on the party's hideout. The GM would offer me more money laundering and I would grow the group's holdings without letting them know where all the money came from. It eventually got to a point where my character had a mega corporate level safe house, numerous vehicles for the party and an army of drones. Again the character was out pacing the rest of the party. So I decided to retire the character. He is now the party's fixer and I am playing one of his AI's which gained sentience. We haven't circled back to that campaign yet. So the party doesn't know yet. They may start to feel the financial crunch again. The GM hasn't let me know how much of the previous character's empire they have access too lol.
I do think the DM killing the player was wrong and babysitting does suck. I think players should recognize and manage their own RP to work with one another. Killing a player on session 1 is a hardcore style that should be explained to the players ahead of time.
Not to mention said player was a newbie, this being their first campaign. They were *not* the first one to touch the crown, They were NOT killed immidietly which hints at by running away DM had other plans for it at the moment. Only when Rogue was caught by the teammates DM decided to kill him instead of giving a chance to teammates, who could at least try to save the lad.
We had kinda the opposite problem recently. Our GM tends to be overly exited for new ideas so we always have to remind him that we want to finish what we are doing first. Our characters are in a city right now for which there is a prewritten adventure centered around joining the city guard and solving crimes. Now, most of us love the idea in general but aside from one, none of our characters are build for this and it also doesn't fit with them and their stories. And we just loved our characters and the ongoing adventure more than this new idea.
For the final story, no, it isnt weird to die in a one-off and i wouldnt take offense to a fair death in a one-off, even if it was my first session ever. BUT all of that is on the premise. In execution, stay the hell away from that DM if you cant talk it out. "Consequences of actions" BS! The only thing you knew was "dont touch crown" as told by an ally. You watch someone "touch crown" without consequence and try to return it to the default position and are killed without agency. It is that last part that is the key; WITHOUT AGENCY. If a death occurs, it has to be the result of the actions taken prior to the death, and i will emphasize the plural on action[S]. "You grab the crown and feel a shiver run down your spine, and like someone is maliciously staring at your soul" "i attempt to drop the crown in a panic" "roll a will save" "failed" "your eyes go black and an evil smile creeps across your face. you start running towards the door." "I roll dex to try and trip myself. fail." a magic user casts hold person on you. fail. holy user tries to banish the evil possessing you. Fail. "thats what, 4 failures? then death. your head explodes." "the sound of the explosion attracts (insert new character here) who (insert motivation and reason for being nearby here)". In no world should you have been killed by that act with no knowledge or ways out. The DM removed your agency and railroaded you into a death, then couldnt bother to find an excuse to let you continue playing. That was targeted and malicious on the part of the DM, even more so against a first time player. And to add insult to injury, you are not even allowed to finish out the session? Run. Run as far as you can and find someone who respects your presence at the table.
I had a similar issue to the first story, then the dm told me i couldn't switched characters since he didnt want to have people start character hopping. I ended up leaving the campaign instead :/.
For third story. Yeah, that is one of the worst DMs. I've ever seen or even heard of wow, you should definitely not play his game anymore. Don't even try to fix it because hes not gonna let you in. Because it is a truth of a universe if your DM is a piece of shit, what you're gonna get from gaming with him is a shit story, a shit game, and this shit time find A dm that is reasonably okay with not being shit, wow.
Yeah that DM was definitely in the wrong. They didn't even let Paladin to roll against being blasted away? The DM railroaded those characters into what they wanted to happened. I'd be pissed too. If you still wanted to play with the other PCS then I would have asked them if they wanted to play with a different DM.
I can only assume the last DM thought since it was a one shot, that they can teach the new player actions have consequences in D&D without it being a character you've sunk time into. However, railroaded death scenes (especially since ally successed roll to knock the crown out of their hands) is just bad, period.
Not sure why in the second story they had these two rules: No evil characters and no torturing. According to the alignment rules, torture has always been an evil act, regardless of the justification. There has never been a change to the alignment system where the reason behind certain actions would change how certain action are regarded. Therefore it is like stating no evil characters and no evil characters... This sounds like a group that either does not know how alignment works in D&D (a common issue) or one that is playing with some sort of subjective house rule interpretation of alignment.
I died of my first session. We have been going through a dungeand everybody else was getting the fight first. I wasn't getting into the fight due to some low Initiative rolls. When we got into our first "big fight area" A ghost of some sort I can't remember the exact enemy. Going through walls came up behind me and got a sneak attack on me rolling a natural twenty. I failed on absolutely every save that I could have. And got one shot for my first damage ever taking playing the game without ever getting to attack. Things happen. My twin with an altered name cane in and I continued my low rolling status. I was notorious for rolling badly.
Same here. Picked a wizard because team was full of melee characters and a rogue. Got bad inititave on my second fight. DM, Despite me being behind 3 of my allies, a tree, and a large ass tent, Used enemy wizards to Blind me and then cast LV 5 Fireball near me two times in a row (which I survived), while summoning three magical weapons that focused on me directly. By the time I had my turn, I had 2 HP left, was blinded which pretty much worked like a silence due to every spell useful to me requiring sight at level 6, Surrounded by enemies while being burned alive. I died. Then one of the players found some excuse to interpret it a certain way to say I didnt. Dropped the campaign after DM did this three more times in three different fights.
My first session I was brought in halfway and the entire party died within 15 minutes. Had a laugh about it and we all agreed to start a new campaign instead of trying to fix the situation
Any Dungeon Master who imposes an instant death mechanic on a new player-or any player, for that matter-should have their Game Master card revoked and Dungeon Master’s Guide confiscated. If the DM provides a warning through a hint or a successful Wisdom check, that's acceptable. However, instant death mechanics are not cool. My first DM did the same to me, and I almost quit the game forever because of that experience. (long and short was playing a druid. DM didn't say were a mix party of high levels with a me a low level. DM though a troll at the group and instant killed me 42 damage on a level 1 character. no explanation first ten min of the game and dead)
I had a friend who did this with one of his character we all actually liked. It made sense narratively, but I should preface this with additional background information, 1st he got bored of characters easily, 2nd liked interparty conflict but no idea or talent at actually setting it up, 3rd killed off his characters either doing something stupid, or causing interparty conflict to the point there was no real justifcation for the other party member to not just cut them down. But this one character, was hands down his best, liked by everyone, had a cool stuff going on. Sadly they where in the game all of about 4 or 5 sessions during a siege of a city by monsters controlled by some hideous variant of giant hag, one lucky crit with a kineticist composite blast (pathfinder was our game of choice) and one really hot roll DMs super beast and big bad of the arch/important backstory character for my friends character is well deleted with a Ice lance infused with holy power. I am no longer in this group we broke apart a few years ago and I only occationally still talk shop with the old DM. I miss them sometimes but the group breaking apart left some bad blood.
I just had a character that didn’t feel the party could help him achieve his goals (given by the GM) and the only CG character so he was a bit of a wet blanket for the rest of the party so he slipped away from the party. I’m a little sad because he’s a great character and I was really enjoying the side story the GM had for him but party cohesion is important for game flow.
In front of all players I rolled all 18’s for stats during character creation, it was the most epic session 0. All the players killed my character at 1st session, with the “your character is a freak of nature” excuse Then the DM took control of my character and turned him into an undead BBEG, and killed my 2nd character months later. I’ve yet to roll even 1 stat to be 18 since that character, 5 years ago. But anytime I need to beat 1 of those players in a dice challenge, I always roll a 20 against them, it’s been a mixed blessing.
Tbf, I wouldn't even play with an all 18 character. That seems unfun and definitely sucks as other players feel like they're competing with your stats. I'd always just reroll if I get the same dice stat number 3 times, but usually, that's for like an 8-11 with my luck.
I remember my very first ever session of playing DnD for the first time. I was a human bounty hunter and I got killed off early on (like 20-30 minutes in). (Think of me as the red shirt of the group). I was laughing really hard about it and had just as much fun watching the rest of the session unfold.
The last DM seems like an ass. It seemed like his ally succeeded the roll in knocking the crown out of his hands, but the DM just said "no". Him being downed isn't that big of a deal, it would've revealed the "consequence" without punishing him too harshly, but the DM completely prevented his players from helping him out. Not to mention that the Paladin touched it, but nothing had apparently happened. So unless that was like an 17-ish level Devotion Paladin it seems like the DM just had a grudge for him.
So basically, what you are telling me, is that if you wanted the player not to torture people anymore, you needed to create an evil party, so that he could contrast them by making a character that was good! Did I just solve the problem for you?
One of my favorite roleplay scenes emerged from a character's decision to join the BBEG. The BBEG was morally grey, planning to kill 99.9% of the population to save everyone in the long run. My character was too soft hearted to be swayed by this, he chose to save everyone in front of him even if it meant dooming everyone millions of years from now, not to mention he held out hope there was another solution which might emerge with time. The asshole character was too petty to be swayed, harbored a strong dislike for the BBEG and wasn't civic minded enough to care about long term effects. The logical, young, sweet mage character on the other hand... She sat the party down and told us she was leaving to join the BBEG. This devastated the asshole character, who was an asshole due to abandonment and trust issues. My character tried to mediate and talk her out of it, while the asshole character was furious and yelled at her to leave. Good times.
The last story. Dm needs his ass kicked, that was bullshit and he doesn't know what the hell he is doing. However, there was no reason to touch the crown, no rationalization would somehow convince some a cursed or trapped item is no longer cursed or trapped because it was knocked over. I supposed more context would be needed with the tail bit. Did it actually touch it or the podium it was on? But don't go touching things that the gm announces bad vibes. Also, if the twil did touch the item and the paladin didn't have to make a save then why suddenly it works? Is there a condition on it needing to be in someone's hands? It seems targeted. Overall the situation was dumb
re: last story. Instant-Death mechanics are simply bad design. OP had no reason to believe touching the crown would kill them, ESPECIALLY not since someone else had already touched it. This wasn't the "consequences of his actions." This was a DM who wanted an excuse to kill a PC and only give them a token chance to avoid it. That is a very big red flag on that DM, and I'd keep an eye out for more, because I suspect they will keep coming.
It was WORSE than "instant death:" it was an elaborate and intentionally prolonged death, that the DM refused to let be undone.
"Instant-Dearh mechanics are simply bad design." Under most circumstances, yes. At the same time, it depends on the party, the run, the story, and purpose of the game.
We had an old shareware game called Mordor (creative, I know), where you would create a character and delve layer by layer into the abyss. There were tons of encounters, and a few instant death traps. Each death though? It left behind that character's corpse. Every single one. That meant that my sister's "Sriess" character that got turned to stone? We could loot it and pay respects once we reached level 19. The corpses that littered levels 1-5? All our failed attempts. My "Death Ronin" on level 8? Marked the dart trap. Overall it worked like corpses irl on Mount Everest, markers for where to avoid or what turn to take. And yes, each character creation was as in depth as making a D&D sheet, just slightly more automated: race, class, height, points, abilities, skills, etc.
It all depends, like most things in tabletop rpgs. It all just depends.
@@Undomaranel Issue is this is OP's first DM experience. He is pretty much a noob. DM is not only punishing him specifically while not using the same rule against the Paladin who originally dropped the crown, But also making sure he dies.
He didnt insta kill the Rogue. He tried to make him runaway. When Rogue was caught by his teammates, he purposefully killed the rogue through forced suicide without giving any chance to other players, who could've saved the rogue.
DM seems simply unreasonable at that point.
This wasn't insta-death, nor do I think you know what that mechanic actually is. Insta-death is where a player gets no option, save, or ability checks to avoid a deadly encounter, like entering a hallway and the DM says the ceiling collapses, killing the character. Even in original D&D, which had many save or die mechanics, it was stated that insta-death mechanics were not fair to do, nor was the game intended to use them (at least post-Gygax).
However, the DM seemed dead set on killing this character, though it definitely isn't an insta-death mechanic so much as DM *BS* mechanic typical of crap DMs.
@@Kronosfobi Agreed.
I did this once. I had a character leave the party because I felt the plot was something my character wasn't interested in and they had other goals. I told the party upfront I was leaving. There was some in character and out of character conversation. The split was mutual and my character set themselves up as mayor of a town we liberated. So the party occasionally stops by during the main quest arc.
Oh, thats actually really sweet
On the last story:
There are only so many things things you should have in your game that will lead to unavoidable death with a single failure of a save, but one in the first session?! Players even sounded sorta clever, trying to knock the crown off with an attack, but the DM's response sounded more like bullshitting on the fly rather than legitimate pre-planned effects.
I once had a character leave a campaing, but not it such a way and it went horribly. It was a character refusing to be brought back to life. She was a barbarian, very proud and sure of her strength.We were playing with a few homebrew D&D 3.5 rules, we had a certain number of points we could put into advantages and flaws and I chose to make her the descendant of white dragon. She started lvl 1with 22 strength (I know it's a lot) but 6 intelligence and 6 wisdom, immune to cold damage but took twice as much in fire damage. She was basicly a grown womanwith a kid's mind.
When we reach lvl 5, we had to investigate an horde of monsters appearing at the country's frontier. The DM only described "You see 3 demons on a hill, far from the rest of the horde. One is big and read, one is a grey toad and the last one is a small winged gremlin." The party leader told my character to handle the big red demon (we all though it was a red slaad) while the other targetted the grey toad to gain some time while reinforcement were on the way. Well, I won initiative and attackthe creature. Critical it. "Unforunately, the balor is wearing an enchanted armor negating your critical hit, it was given to him by the death slaad next to him." Then the balor struck at me, critical hit, my character's head went flying. So my character was killed in 1 blow, proving to herself she was weak and useless and couldn't protect her friends, something she took pride in.
Turn out the whole thing was involve the DM's friends main characters, a bunch of lvl 35 demi-gods that whiped the floor with the demon hordeand the bosses and resurected every one. My character refused and I was blasted as a stupid kid throwing a tamper tantrum. Mycharacter was a follower of Tyr (Yeah, the Northen god, homebrew remember?) and felt like she was so weak she didn't deserve a second chance. Tyr disagreed with her, saw her valor, saw how she struck at an opponent she had no chance to even beat and chose to accept her in his realm. When I explained my situation to the DM, we reluctantly agreed with me. His friend though litteraly told me "I'm a demi god, the apostle of Freya. If I say I bring you back yo life, I bring you back to life so stop whining." The DM took my side, told him to go fight Tyr if he wanted my soul back but, let's be honest, after that whole fiasco, I didn't feel like being a part of that group any longer.
Depending on the DM's homebrew, i think the "friend" would have to deal with not only Tyr but also Hel, since hes trying to forcefully ressurect someone.
@@peterwhite6415 Maybe... I'm not so sure to be honest. Remember, that player was one of the DM's friends and he screwed over a whole group of player to make them look cool. Making him fight 2 gods would just make him look stupid, so I really doubt he would have done something like that.
That DM in the second story was absolutely being a jerk - I saw a *ton* of that behavior when i was playing world of darkness games on IRC back in the day, and it was usually tied to this weird sense of elitism on the part of the DM (or storyteller, in the case of world of darkness). Like, it almost felt like they thought new players were too 'soft' and really wanted to impress upon them the grit and gravity of "super serious roleplay" in basically the most maladaptive and stupid way possible. Felt more like bullying than a good way to ease a new person into a hobby you ostensibly love and want to share with others, you know?
Not being a jerk, but rather NOT DOING HIS DAMN JOB! They set up the rules at session zero and is NOT ENFORCING THEM! Not to mention that the guy admitted to making contrarian characters ON PURPOSE! He should have been booted on the spot when he admitted that he wouldn't play ball
On last story: that DM was absolutely being a prick. If he's running some Darkest Dungeon / Tomb of Horrors style stuff, he should 100% have been up front with that. As well, even RAW the crown couldn't do that. And to then add in some kind of force field to actively prevent the Paladin from saving you? Dick moves all the way down.
I'd also be curious, which PLAYER mentioned the Pally knocked the crown with their tail? Was it the Pally player or the GM? Because if it was the GM that just sounds like trying to stir up shit.
It can be fun to mess with your players, have weird, absurd stuff happen that they just don't have full perspective on. It can be funny, it can be scary, TONS of story potential. But you don't frakkin' KILL the PCs with it! That's just shitty writing. Like one of the lesser Friday the 13th movies.
Dont be a dick!
Those friday movies at least made some loose sense.
@@Kronosfobi Three words: Voorhees Demon Lizard.
Honestly, the real problem with that death is that the player in question only got ONE Roll to not die a delayed Death, everything after that was just giving them false hope... What makes it worse is that they didn't have any warning that this could happen beyond the Paladin just going "Don't touch that", which could just as well be "I know you rogues have Sticky Fingers" Type of moment...
The Scenario would have Been Less of a dick move if it had just been "Your Character walks into a room, Make a... What's your Weakest Save? Yeah Roll that, Beat 20.... Oh, you Failed? Well your character Drops dead, and can't be Revived by any means as the Floor Sucks your Soul out." (No, there was no perception check to notice the magical trap as it had no Physical Identifiers)... At least in this Scenario the Death is Instant, and you don't get Trolled Into thinking you Might survive for I'm assuming 20 or more Minutes of play time! I Mean, this is still a Massive Dick move, but it would be Less bad than what this Player was put though.
I had to leave a campaign spanning three and a half years about a year ago, and while it wasn’t necessarily by choice, my DM did give me agency in how I left. I won’t go into unnecessary detail, but the TLDR is that another player and I were both close friends of the DM. The other player was overreacting to an event that took place out of campaign, and taking out their anger on us, the other players. I called the other player out on their BS and privately told our DM that I was getting tired of other player’s behavior, as it wasn’t the first time something like that had occurred. DM interpreted that to mean she had to pick between which friend she had to keep and which to boot. I had made another good friend through DM, and she told him (he even had pictures to prove it) that she had gone to the other players and asked them which one she should keep. Apparently, if they were forced to keep one, the group nearly unanimously wanted to keep the other player.
I admit that it was extremely painful to know that my DM, who had been a good friend for about 5 years had gone behind my back, and that the players I spent so much time with had all voted against me. DM tried to explain to me their collective rationales, but a lot of it was cherry picking.
For example, those three years we had spent playing IRL? Yeah, in game, it was only 2 months. My character had undergone a massive redemption arc, and apparently that arc was “unbelievable” in that time frame (ironic given that everyone in the group watched tons of anime, where quick redemptions happen all the time), and had apparently caused the DM a lot of extra work (as if the Rogue’s secret behind the scenes cult wasn’t a lot of extra work too?).
Still, I said my DM did give me agency in my departure, so I might as well address that. Given how much time that had passed, I talked with her about a worthwhile reason to leave, and we ran with that. TLDR, the redemption arc allowed my character’s mother, who my character had believed dead for years, to psychically reach out to her. My character also found out that shortly before the campaign had started, the lover she had abandoned had gotten her pregnant. Given the amount of time that had passed, around the 2 month mark was when morning sickness started, prompting her to visit the doctor and discover the pregnancy. Choosing to keep her child, my character made a bold choice. While it would pain her to leave the group, the frontier time we had made our base in was no place to raise a child, and she wanted to reunite with her mother after all these years apart. My character made her goodbyes, packed up, and left… and about 8 months later was reunited with her mother. Now they’re a family again, my character, her mother, and her infant daughter!
It still pains me when I think about the actions of my DM and other players, but I suppose things weren’t as good as I had believed if one disagreement pushed me off the edge. I only wish literally any of the players, or even my DM had talked to me before it apparently got that bad. Did they truly think I was THAT unapproachable?
I tend to retire my characters it seems. I had 2 in particular who went through the same crisis yours did.
1) Dresden Files FATE game. I played an inventor who got roped into running around with the party because of his need to know everything about everything and how it worked. The GM actually put a Denarius in front of the character and suddenly the character had access to magic. I had the classic fight against the demon inside the coin. But eventually I found the character was too easy to get through anything the dm threw at us. So I had a chat and decided the character would retire. But he did it by betraying the party, fully embracing the demon to gain more knowledge and is now a BBEG the party has to continually worry about. My replacement character is the former assistant to the former charcter/now-BBEG. So the GM and I basically traded character sheets during the separation battle between the party and the new BBEG.
2) shadowrun. I was playing a decker/rigger that the GM gave us some money laundering tasks for a high level yakuza boss. My character set it up and pocketed a percentage. The GM wasn't expecting that but thought it was funny that I had increased the money for the yakuza and taken some off the top. So she let it go. I didn't question how much it was at the time figuring it was a small amount. But my take was around 300,000 nuyen. I later found this out and quickly spent the money on the party's hideout. The GM would offer me more money laundering and I would grow the group's holdings without letting them know where all the money came from. It eventually got to a point where my character had a mega corporate level safe house, numerous vehicles for the party and an army of drones. Again the character was out pacing the rest of the party. So I decided to retire the character. He is now the party's fixer and I am playing one of his AI's which gained sentience. We haven't circled back to that campaign yet. So the party doesn't know yet. They may start to feel the financial crunch again. The GM hasn't let me know how much of the previous character's empire they have access too lol.
I do think the DM killing the player was wrong and babysitting does suck. I think players should recognize and manage their own RP to work with one another. Killing a player on session 1 is a hardcore style that should be explained to the players ahead of time.
Not to mention said player was a newbie, this being their first campaign.
They were *not* the first one to touch the crown, They were NOT killed immidietly which hints at by running away DM had other plans for it at the moment.
Only when Rogue was caught by the teammates DM decided to kill him instead of giving a chance to teammates, who could at least try to save the lad.
We had kinda the opposite problem recently. Our GM tends to be overly exited for new ideas so we always have to remind him that we want to finish what we are doing first.
Our characters are in a city right now for which there is a prewritten adventure centered around joining the city guard and solving crimes.
Now, most of us love the idea in general but aside from one, none of our characters are build for this and it also doesn't fit with them and their stories. And we just loved our characters and the ongoing adventure more than this new idea.
For the final story, no, it isnt weird to die in a one-off and i wouldnt take offense to a fair death in a one-off, even if it was my first session ever. BUT all of that is on the premise. In execution, stay the hell away from that DM if you cant talk it out. "Consequences of actions" BS! The only thing you knew was "dont touch crown" as told by an ally. You watch someone "touch crown" without consequence and try to return it to the default position and are killed without agency. It is that last part that is the key; WITHOUT AGENCY. If a death occurs, it has to be the result of the actions taken prior to the death, and i will emphasize the plural on action[S]. "You grab the crown and feel a shiver run down your spine, and like someone is maliciously staring at your soul" "i attempt to drop the crown in a panic" "roll a will save" "failed" "your eyes go black and an evil smile creeps across your face. you start running towards the door." "I roll dex to try and trip myself. fail." a magic user casts hold person on you. fail. holy user tries to banish the evil possessing you. Fail. "thats what, 4 failures? then death. your head explodes." "the sound of the explosion attracts (insert new character here) who (insert motivation and reason for being nearby here)". In no world should you have been killed by that act with no knowledge or ways out. The DM removed your agency and railroaded you into a death, then couldnt bother to find an excuse to let you continue playing. That was targeted and malicious on the part of the DM, even more so against a first time player. And to add insult to injury, you are not even allowed to finish out the session? Run. Run as far as you can and find someone who respects your presence at the table.
I had a similar issue to the first story, then the dm told me i couldn't switched characters since he didnt want to have people start character hopping. I ended up leaving the campaign instead :/.
For third story. Yeah, that is one of the worst DMs. I've ever seen or even heard of wow, you should definitely not play his game anymore. Don't even try to fix it because hes not gonna let you in. Because it is a truth of a universe if your DM is a piece of shit, what you're gonna get from gaming with him is a shit story, a shit game, and this shit time find A dm that is reasonably okay with not being shit, wow.
Yeah that DM was definitely in the wrong. They didn't even let Paladin to roll against being blasted away? The DM railroaded those characters into what they wanted to happened. I'd be pissed too. If you still wanted to play with the other PCS then I would have asked them if they wanted to play with a different DM.
I can only assume the last DM thought since it was a one shot, that they can teach the new player actions have consequences in D&D without it being a character you've sunk time into. However, railroaded death scenes (especially since ally successed roll to knock the crown out of their hands) is just bad, period.
Not sure why in the second story they had these two rules: No evil characters and no torturing. According to the alignment rules, torture has always been an evil act, regardless of the justification. There has never been a change to the alignment system where the reason behind certain actions would change how certain action are regarded. Therefore it is like stating no evil characters and no evil characters...
This sounds like a group that either does not know how alignment works in D&D (a common issue) or one that is playing with some sort of subjective house rule interpretation of alignment.
I died of my first session. We have been going through a dungeand everybody else was getting the fight first. I wasn't getting into the fight due to some low Initiative rolls. When we got into our first "big fight area" A ghost of some sort I can't remember the exact enemy. Going through walls came up behind me and got a sneak attack on me rolling a natural twenty. I failed on absolutely every save that I could have. And got one shot for my first damage ever taking playing the game without ever getting to attack. Things happen. My twin with an altered name cane in and I continued my low rolling status. I was notorious for rolling badly.
Same here. Picked a wizard because team was full of melee characters and a rogue.
Got bad inititave on my second fight.
DM, Despite me being behind 3 of my allies, a tree, and a large ass tent, Used enemy wizards to Blind me and then cast LV 5 Fireball near me two times in a row (which I survived), while summoning three magical weapons that focused on me directly.
By the time I had my turn, I had 2 HP left, was blinded which pretty much worked like a silence due to every spell useful to me requiring sight at level 6, Surrounded by enemies while being burned alive.
I died.
Then one of the players found some excuse to interpret it a certain way to say I didnt.
Dropped the campaign after DM did this three more times in three different fights.
@furkanefeturec that's worse than mine jeez that is a bit ridiculous. Hard to find a goof group/dm
I love the art; I wish some of these animations could be screen savers for my laptop
My first session I was brought in halfway and the entire party died within 15 minutes. Had a laugh about it and we all agreed to start a new campaign instead of trying to fix the situation
You: as a PC can tell them "Your adventure has ended here, DM"
In the last one if the dm wanted to fix it, they could make the campaign about getting their character out of the afterlife
Any Dungeon Master who imposes an instant death mechanic on a new player-or any player, for that matter-should have their Game Master card revoked and Dungeon Master’s Guide confiscated. If the DM provides a warning through a hint or a successful Wisdom check, that's acceptable. However, instant death mechanics are not cool. My first DM did the same to me, and I almost quit the game forever because of that experience. (long and short was playing a druid. DM didn't say were a mix party of high levels with a me a low level. DM though a troll at the group and instant killed me 42 damage on a level 1 character. no explanation first ten min of the game and dead)
I had a friend who did this with one of his character we all actually liked. It made sense narratively, but I should preface this with additional background information, 1st he got bored of characters easily, 2nd liked interparty conflict but no idea or talent at actually setting it up, 3rd killed off his characters either doing something stupid, or causing interparty conflict to the point there was no real justifcation for the other party member to not just cut them down.
But this one character, was hands down his best, liked by everyone, had a cool stuff going on. Sadly they where in the game all of about 4 or 5 sessions during a siege of a city by monsters controlled by some hideous variant of giant hag, one lucky crit with a kineticist composite blast (pathfinder was our game of choice) and one really hot roll DMs super beast and big bad of the arch/important backstory character for my friends character is well deleted with a Ice lance infused with holy power.
I am no longer in this group we broke apart a few years ago and I only occationally still talk shop with the old DM. I miss them sometimes but the group breaking apart left some bad blood.
The first story was a nice and mature player decision
"for good reason but you decide if it's justified or not"
... What?
As in "It's good, but is it good enough?"
Not everything is black-and-white
I just had a character that didn’t feel the party could help him achieve his goals (given by the GM) and the only CG character so he was a bit of a wet blanket for the rest of the party so he slipped away from the party. I’m a little sad because he’s a great character and I was really enjoying the side story the GM had for him but party cohesion is important for game flow.
In front of all players I rolled all 18’s for stats during character creation, it was the most epic session 0. All the players killed my character at 1st session, with the “your character is a freak of nature” excuse
Then the DM took control of my character and turned him into an undead BBEG, and killed my 2nd character months later.
I’ve yet to roll even 1 stat to be 18 since that character, 5 years ago.
But anytime I need to beat 1 of those players in a dice challenge, I always roll a 20 against them, it’s been a mixed blessing.
Tbf, I wouldn't even play with an all 18 character. That seems unfun and definitely sucks as other players feel like they're competing with your stats. I'd always just reroll if I get the same dice stat number 3 times, but usually, that's for like an 8-11 with my luck.
If your character is going to leave, always consult the party and DM.
I remember my very first ever session of playing DnD for the first time. I was a human bounty hunter and I got killed off early on (like 20-30 minutes in). (Think of me as the red shirt of the group). I was laughing really hard about it and had just as much fun watching the rest of the session unfold.
The last DM seems like an ass. It seemed like his ally succeeded the roll in knocking the crown out of his hands, but the DM just said "no". Him being downed isn't that big of a deal, it would've revealed the "consequence" without punishing him too harshly, but the DM completely prevented his players from helping him out. Not to mention that the Paladin touched it, but nothing had apparently happened. So unless that was like an 17-ish level Devotion Paladin it seems like the DM just had a grudge for him.
So basically, what you are telling me, is that if you wanted the player not to torture people anymore, you needed to create an evil party, so that he could contrast them by making a character that was good!
Did I just solve the problem for you?
That last DM was a POS
Bad dms everywhere
Oh i'm getting slower these days on the take golly....I never did give myself a proper time limit thohgh YIRBEL LIVES.
It was the DM. Your dealing with a killer DM who probably hates rouges
One of my favorite roleplay scenes emerged from a character's decision to join the BBEG. The BBEG was morally grey, planning to kill 99.9% of the population to save everyone in the long run. My character was too soft hearted to be swayed by this, he chose to save everyone in front of him even if it meant dooming everyone millions of years from now, not to mention he held out hope there was another solution which might emerge with time. The asshole character was too petty to be swayed, harbored a strong dislike for the BBEG and wasn't civic minded enough to care about long term effects. The logical, young, sweet mage character on the other hand... She sat the party down and told us she was leaving to join the BBEG. This devastated the asshole character, who was an asshole due to abandonment and trust issues. My character tried to mediate and talk her out of it, while the asshole character was furious and yelled at her to leave. Good times.
Well, if you kill everyone know, then their children can not die in the future.
The last story. Dm needs his ass kicked, that was bullshit and he doesn't know what the hell he is doing.
However, there was no reason to touch the crown, no rationalization would somehow convince some a cursed or trapped item is no longer cursed or trapped because it was knocked over. I supposed more context would be needed with the tail bit. Did it actually touch it or the podium it was on? But don't go touching things that the gm announces bad vibes.
Also, if the twil did touch the item and the paladin didn't have to make a save then why suddenly it works? Is there a condition on it needing to be in someone's hands? It seems targeted.
Overall the situation was dumb